Conservative Lies About Human Nature

Sharing, by Timothy Valentine

Since World War II, America’s elite policy makers have arranged and re-arranged our political and economic relationships around an empirically false – radically false – understanding of human being and behavior.

Paradoxically, the false portrait of humankind feeds both an unwholesome worship of dog-eat-dog individualism and a sense of powerless in the face of godlike market forces that must be obeyed no matter the cost in lives, global environmental catastrophe or gross economic injustice.

Its roots lie in the gloomy Hobbesian picture of unredeemable, brutish humanity and in the Enlightenment’s faith in universal reason. Twentieth Century conservative thinkers, looking to rationalize authoritarianism and excuse the inevitable social destruction caused by unrestrained greed, simply invented new concepts of human nature that made their policy goals seem essential.

It’s just one of many ironies that this authoritarian view was swallowed whole hog by so-called libertarians. It should be noted that Robert Nozick, author of the seminal libertarian book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, later spit out the worm he’d swallowed and repudiated his earlier work.)

The ugly, empirically false portrait is this: a human is a cold and isolated individual who uses unemotional reason to reach pre-determined ends. This is the widely discredited but still popular “rational actor” model. And there’s another color in the picture, which some are now calling the “rat choice” model. This tells us those pre-determined ends are always selfish or self-interested.

We are, these conservatives say, rats.

As virtually every field within the human sciences has found, we are nothing like that. Because we are hard-wired for empathy, we can and do act altruistically. We seek fairness. Our selves are not isolated, but interconnected in many ways. We are competitive, but we are also cooperative. Reason and emotion are intertwined. There’s no such thing as unemotional reason. We don’t coldly follow the rules of logic in making moral decisions.

In his new book, The Fair Society, biologist Peter Corning writes:
Contrary to the stereotype about our innate selfishness and greed, most of us share a desire to live in a society where fairness is the operative norm, where everybody’s basic needs are met…where there is a robust sense of ‘reciprocity’ – a rough balancing of benefits and obligations.

Cognitive scientists like George Lakoff have been urging us to understand the new 21st Century understanding of human being and thinking. Dozens of others have made similar points. We can’t advance a progressive social vision using false assumptions disguised as unbiased scholarship, assumptions intended to forever preclude a fair, progressive, democratic society.

In her new book, Cultivating Conscience, UCLAS law professor Lynn Stout demolishes the concept of “homo economicus,” the descriptive name for the lonely, selfish, hyper-rational and exclusively materialist creature invented by conservative propagandists.

That view, Stout says, “implies we are psychopaths.”

It should come as no surprise that corporations and wealthy conservative ideologues funded the multi-decade effort to convince Americans our nature is other than it is. First came the Rand Corporation. It was there that economist Kenneth Arrow articulated the so-called “rational choice” theory. Here’s how historian Alex Abella summed it up in Soldiers of Reason:

Arrow’s rational choice theory would become a mainstay of economics and political science; by the 1960s…it would redefine the foundations of public policy by assuming that self-interest defines all aspects of human activity…When applied to corporations, the theory exempted them from any social responsibility other than that owed to their shareholders…

Next came the so-called “law and economics” movement, centered mostly at the University of Chicago and spearheaded by Richard Posner, Gary Becker and others. In a nutshell, its propagandists insisted that the “rational actor” model be employed to decide legal disputes.

Such right-wing benefactors as Richard Scaiffe funded the law and economics movement with millions of dollars to the University of Chicago, the Manhattan Institute and other institutions. The funding was not intended to help a search for truth. It was intended to paint a picture of human nature that justified unbridled greed and the injustice that follows from its institutional legitimacy. There are echoes here of other authoritarian traditions that condemned the rabble to justify elite power. The religious myth about the Fall of Man, for instance, is accompanied by the assertion that only priests and pastors can save us from ourselves.

Conservative columnist David Brooks is clearly alarmed that the dark vision of humanity that fueled the conservative movement for decades is being unmasked. He is trying to fit the new, more humanistic and hopeful portrait into a scheme for more, not less, authoritarian control. In his book, The Social Animal, Brooks recommends the new human sciences be employed to shape (read: control) people’s behavior. He leaves untouched all questions about whether such control is moral.

Edwin L. Rubin, who elaborated on the “rat choice theory” mentioned above, summed up the motivations of those who invented the cruel, selfish homo economicus:

…rational choice theory and rat choice theory, when combined, provide a comprehensive argument for an unregulated market, an argument grounded in a theory of human behavior and human choices.

Just last week, philosopher John McCumber took on the rational actor model and homo economicus in the New York Times:

Whatever my preferences are, I have a better chance of realizing them if I possess wealth and power. Rational choice philosophy thus promulgates a clear and compelling moral imperative: increase your wealth and power!

A moral imperative for the pursuit of wealth and power, whatever the consequences for the many and for society at large. That was the goal of the confidence men who sold us a false and destructive view of our own natures. So successful were they that many progressives (and most Democrats) remain content to operate within the frames and narratives generated by the scam.

Our most important a task involves replacing the deceitful view of humankind with the new – and true – picture of cooperative, empathic and complex human being (we can, obviously, be selfish, cruel and violent – but that’s not all we are).

A society organized around the values generated by such a picture will look radically different from political and economic structures forced upon us by the greedy authoritarians who sold us a bill of goods about ourselves.

Humans are psychologically complicated. There are many scientists working to understand us and many who are using the information generated to control us.

This essay, vitally important and accurate, lays out some of the devious pressures that have been used to achieve a conformity that benefits the few. To get us to acquiesce to what we have been told we are.

Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) raised hell last year to stop the federal government from investigating Goldman Sachs regarding allegations that the company defrauded investors. In April 2010, shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a civil suit against Goldman Sachs, Issa sent a letter to SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro demanding to know if there was “any sort of prearrangement, coordination, direction from, or advance notice” between the SEC and the Obama administration or congressional Democrats over the timing of the lawsuit.

Issa’s investigation of the SEC’s investigation into Goldman Sachs stole the headlinesand reinforced Goldman Sach’s claim that they had done nothing wrong. Explaining his defense of Goldman Sachs, Issa said he was representing the views of ordinary Americans who are worried about the “growth of government and the growth of government wanting to become more complex, with more agencies and more control over our lives.”

However, recent personal finance disclosures reviewed by ThinkProgress paint a different picture of Issa’s motivations. According to documents filed recently with the House Clerk, Issa went on a buying spree of high yield Goldman Sachs bonds at the same time he was running defense for the investment bank in Congress. From February to December of 2010, Issa bought 12 Goldman Sachs High Yield Fund Class Abonds, each worth up to $50,000 (view page 10 the disclosure here). Many of the bonds were purchased in the months after he filed his letter to the SEC. The $600,000 in new Goldman Sachs investments added to Issa’s already multimillion dollar stake in the company, valued from $5.1 to $15.5 million.

Issa has faced accusations that he has used his considerable political power to enrich himself. Earlier this year, ThinkProgress revealed that Issa had requested nearly $1 million in earmark projects that would have benefitted real estate owned by Issa and his family.

Around the time Issa launched his defense of Goldman Sachs and Republicans at-large ramped up efforts to stop President Obama’s financial reforms, Goldman Sachs and other major investment banks shifted their campaign donations mostly to Republican candidates.

Issa’s inquiry in defense of Goldman Sachs turned out to be completely bunk. In October, an Inspector General investigation found no wrongdoing by the SEC regarding Issa’s allegations. But for all the media attention Issa created with his request for an investigation into the SEC, he faced little to no blowback for being dead wrong. Meanwhile, a report this year authored by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Carl Levin (D-MI) concluded that Goldman Sachs “misled clients and Congress about the firm’s bets on securities tied to the housing market.”

This is here because it was written as humor but I don't consider it humor. Listen to what they say and this is the logical outcome.

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Republicans: Trillions Could Be Cut from Budget if We Eliminate Empathy.

Humanity Also on Chopping Block

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Speaking on behalf of congressional Republicans, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said today that trillions could be cut from the Federal budget if Congress can agree to eliminate empathy.

“The current budget is bursting at the seams with pet projects that reek of empathy,” Rep. Cantor said. “As a nation, we can no longer afford to spend money on people’s basic survival needs like a bunch of drunken sailors.”

“We Americans should get out of the habit of using Greek words,” he added. “Look where it’s gotten the Greeks – straight into bankruptcy.”

Once congressional Republicans eliminate such empathy-laden budget items as lunches for poor children, medicine for the indigent and oxygen for seniors, Rep. Cantor said, “We can move from cutting empathy to cutting humanity.”

With humanity removed from the budget, he said, “That’s where the real savings come in.”

By eliminating the food, medicine and oxygen necessary to sustain human life, “We will reduce the single biggest drain on the U.S. economy: people.”

Ending on an optimistic note, Rep. Cantor said that by eliminating people, “by the middle of this century the United States will be successfully transformed into one big unmanned Predator drone.”

Don't you have a meeting regarding your trust fund? You know, the way most liberals protect their wealth from the government?? The Kennedy's have them, Soros has them....... All these great "tax the rich" men have them....

Kerry tried to buy a boat in RI to get it without sales tax.... You support him, correct? He's a democrat after all.....

Um excuse me but you really know absolutely nothing about my money so please stop with the conjectures. There is no trust fund; not that there would be anything wrong if i had one. Are you implying that there is something wrong with having a trust fund? Jealous of people that have them? I dont quite understand your anger.
I pay my fair share of taxes (my father was one of the most scrupulously honest people i have ever met.
I have tried to follow in his footsteps and im extremely proud and grateful for that legacy) and unlike you I am not complaining because i know that the tax rates are at their lowest in many, many years.
All those wealthy so called "liberals" (Buffett, Gates, Soros, etc) put their money where there mouths are and are willing to be taxed at a higher rate unlike your favorite wealthy Conservatives like Limbaugh, Beck. O'reilly etc. who complain constantly about how much the govt wants to take away from them while they grow ever richer from the low taxes they pay.
Your problem is that you seem to identify with the people who are screwing you, the middle class, and this country.

Um excuse me but you really know absolutely nothing about my money so please stop with the conjectures. There is no trust fund; not that there would be anything wrong if i had one. Are you implying that there is something wrong with having a trust fund? Jealous of people that have them? I dont quite understand your anger.
I pay my fair share of taxes (my father was one of the most scrupulously honest people i have ever met.
I have tried to follow in his footsteps and im extremely proud and grateful for that legacy) and unlike you I am not complaining because i know that the tax rates are at their lowest in many, many years.
All those wealthy so called "liberals" (Buffett, Gates, Soros, etc) put their money where there mouths are and are willing to be taxed at a higher rate unlike your favorite wealthy Conservatives like Limbaugh, Beck. O'reilly etc. who complain constantly about how much the govt wants to take away from them while they grow ever richer from the low taxes they pay.
Your problem is that you seem to identify with the people who are screwing you, the middle class, and this country.

Lloyd, the liberals want are screwing me with their tax and spend agenda. More government, more government programs.... Do you think this family could put $35,000 of tax money to good use? $35,000. Do you understand that number? This is for a family that lives in a 1200 square foot ranch on a dirt road. This is for a family with 2 young children whose futures we are trying to save for. You are a complete asshole if you think $35,000 is acceptable. I pay my fair share and then some.

In as much as I don't like the conservatives either, at least their position is that people like my have been taxed too much, and YES, I can identify with that.

I'm not jealous the least bit. That's for people like you who have your eyes on others. My point was that they are hypocrites exploiting every "loophole" that they rally against in the corporate world. Unbelievable. Someone could put a pile of shit right in front of your nose and you'd argue it wasn't a pile of shit. It would be funny if it weren't serious.